As telecommunication networks handle more and more traffic, new methods are constantly being developed that allow the networks to process larger flows of information. Link aggregation is one example. In link aggregation, several physical links are aggregated to appear as one logical link to a telecommunications system. This aggregation allows all of the links to be used actively, rather than having particular links reserved. Thus, link aggregation provides more efficient use of network resources and better load balancing. The tradeoff, however, is that link aggregation may also require substantial additional processing and/or hardware to implement the aggregated links.